Welcome to Spycast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum.

I'm your host, Sasha Ingber, and each week I take you into the shadows of espionage,

intelligence, and covert operations across the globe.

The CIA's book club, codename QR Helpful, was a secret 35-year program, born out of fear

that communism would dominate the globe.

About 10 million books were smuggled into the Soviet Union, on trucks and yachts, in tins and

luggage, and even dropped from balloons. The agency believed that the literature could win hearts

and minds, turning citizens of the Soviet bloc into dissidents. It's all documented in author

Charlie English's new book, The CIA Book Club, the first

narrative account of this program. Hey, Charlie, thanks for joining us. I know it's a rainy night in

London. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, it's been raining all day here. London is

living up to its reputation. Yeah. It's been raining all day here. London is living up to its reputation.

Yeah. How did the idea for this book club begin? And had the CIA ever tried anything like this before?

Well, it really grew out of the sort of fear of communism after the end of the Second World War.

And the Americans and the Allies in the West were very alarmed that the communist virus might spread into Western Europe and around the rest of the world.

So they launched something called the Free Europe Committee, which was designed to try and combat communism,

and it did this through radio principally.

But they were also looking for other ways, other methods of delivering the Allied message.

And they began really with delivering propaganda leaflets, which they did from balloons.

They had these very bizarre operations where people would drive out from the Radio Free Europe headquarters in Munich, in these convoys, with these things that look like weather balloons.

And they'd attach big payloads of leaflets to them and fill

them with gas, launch them up into the air, and having checked that the wind was blowing in the

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